Using PowerPointfor Presentations

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Using PowerPoint 2000 — Page 1

Presentations

The key term in PowerPoint is “slide”—a slide is your page. Slides can consist of text, charts, free-hand drawing, clip art, and many other elements. A series of slides strung together into one document (or a “slide show”) creates a “presentation.”

The built-in or default setting in PowerPoint is that a slide is 7.5 inches by 10 inches, landscape. If you wish to do an on-screen presentation (using a computer plugged in to a projection device), this is the proper setting. However, under File/Page Setup, you can change the slide size to regular page size (8.5 x 11), film size (35 mm) if you are having film slides produced, or custom sizes (useful for designing business cards, postcards, greeting cards, posters, and other nonpresentation layouts). Note you can have only one size per file; changing a page setting affects the entire document.

The first step in creating a presentation is deciding what type of “slide” you want, called the slide “layout.” PowerPoint provides variations of the following options (scroll down the screen to see all options):

  • Title slide — Title and subtitle, surrounded by handles which allow you to move and position it
  • Title Only.
  • Bulleted list
  • Double-column bullet list
  • Blank
  • Objects, such as organization chart or scanned items
  • Chart (graph)
  • 2 slides with text and clipart
  • Table
  • Media clips (movies)

A presentation can contain all of these types of slides. Slides can be created in three ways:

  • With AutoContent Wizard, which walks you through the process, asks you questions, and sets slides up for you;
  • From one of the built-in (or custom-created) templates;
  • Through a “Blank Presentation”;

or you can open an existing presentation. When your first slide appears, you have the following options on the screen:

Overview of the “Menu” (top of screen):

File

New, Open, Save, Save as Web Page, Print

Pack-and-Go wizard

Edit

Undo, Cut/Copy/Paste, Paste Special, Find/Replace

View (additional options are in the toolbar at the screen’s lower left corner, above “Draw”)

Normal (show the slide, with outline on the left and notes at the bottom)

Sorter (arrange the slides’ order)

Notes Pages (show only the speaker notes)

Slide Show (view your slide show)

Master (for slide, title, handout, notes)

Black and white (display slide as it would print in black and white)

Slide miniature (show a color thumbnail on-screen)

Toolbars (turn on or off the buttons)

Ruler (on-screen ruler for measuring)

Guides (on-screen guidelines for alignment)

Header/Footer

Comments (attach notations to a slide that can be shown or hidden for the presentation)

Zoom (magnify or decrease the viewing area)

Insert

New Slide

Slide Number, Date, Time

Insert Slides from Another File

Picture, Text Box, Movie, Sounds (as from a CD), Table, Graph, Object

Format

Font (all attributes, including bullets)

Alignment and Spacing

Colors, Lines, Shadows

Slide Layout

Slide Color Scheme

Slide Background

Apply Design Template

Object (or AutoShape)

Tools

Spelling, AutoCorrect, Meeting Minder, Customize (change buttons), Options (defaults)

Slide Show

View Show, Rehearse Timings, Setup Show, Custom Animation, Slide Transition (from 1 slide to next)

Window

Cascade, Arrange All (for working with multiple presentations), Next Pane (move from window to next)

Help

Toolbars

Toolbars are buttons (one click) that contain choices that PowerPoint assumes you would frequently want to use. There are three automatic toolbars:

  • Standard (just below the menu), for functions such as save, print, spell check
  • Formatting text (second line), for font, size, bold, italic, underline, shadow, and more
  • Drawing (bottom), for formatting graphics and drawing lines and boxes

You can also turn on additional toolbars under the View menu. Many functions (such as clip art and comments) have their own toolbar, which appears when you click on that function. Also under the View/Toolbars function is the command to “customize” your toolbars, or add features to the toolbars that you would find useful to have quick access to.

Screen Views

One of the key elements of the screen is the View buttons, at the bottom left corner of the screen. These five buttons determine which “view” you will see on your screen:

  • Normal—The “normal” view splits your screen three ways: at the left is the outline function, at the bottom is the notes function, and at the right is the slide itself.
  • Outline— Switch to text mode for seeing an overview of text content, and for text functions such as spell check and cut-and-paste. This view shows you only the outline of your text; it will show a blank slide if you used the blank layout, even if you put text boxes on the slide.
  • Slide view—See one slide at a time on the screen; size is determined by the view percentage on the top toolbar
  • Slide Sorter— See an overview of all slides. Use the sorter to rearrange your slides and to create the slide show using ‘transitions” and timing.
  • Slide Show — Run your slide show; also serve as print preview.

On the “View” menu is an additional option, “Note Page” view. In this view, the bottom half of the page becomes an area for typing in notes (used by the speaker giving a presentation) and the top half is your slide.

The Slide, Outline, and Notes views can be printed. There is an additional print option called “handouts.” Handouts do not appear on the screen, but they allow you to print multiple slides per page for photocopying and distributing to your audience. You only find the handouts under “File/Print” (also see “masters”).

Other Screen Elements

Scroll bars at right and bottom move the slide around when you zoom in, or move you from slide to slide. Pulling the square box on the right scroll bar reveals the “Elevator,” which gives you a message as to which slide you are at. At the bottom right corner of the screen are double arrows, used to move quickly from slide to slide. Under “View” are rulers for setting margins and gridlines to help align items on the page. Hold the Control key and drag a guide to create additional gridlines as needed.

The right mouse button always brings up the menu that would be appropriate for whatever operation you happen to be working on. It is a shortcut to eliminate having to go up to the menu and buttons each time.

At the right side of the screen is the “Task Pane” (if you don’t see it, look under the “View” menu). The Task Pane gives you quick steps to a wide variety of features, including clip art, cut and paste, starting new presentations, layouts, built-in designs, color schemes, animations, and slide “transitions” for your presentation (see below for more explanation of these operations). The Task Pane constantly changes to reflect your current operations.

Basic Slide Elements

After you choose a slide layout, you can also have two fundamental parts: graphics and text.

Graphics can be created from many sources. They may be from clip art (predrawn artwork that can be edited); they can be drawn in free hand; they can be scanned in or pasted in from other programs. They can also be created from a layout (such as for charts). In addition to drawing tools for creating lines, circles, and arrows, PowerPoint also provides “autoshapes,” which draw commonly used shapes such as cubes and hearts, as well as shapes for flow charts and connectors.

All graphics are controlled by handles. Handles are the block-dots that appear in each corner and in the center between corners. Handles SIZE the graphic. They will stretch it larger, longer, or wider. However, if you don’t want to distort the picture, be sure to stretch from the corner handles. In PowerPoint, the corner handles are called “true”—they preserve the shape. The handles should NOT be used to move or reposition the graphic. If you want to move the graphic to a different location, point in the center and get the four-sided mouse arrow, then click and drag it wherever you want.

If you wish to edit the parts of a graphic (such as clip art), you must be able to turn on each part’s handles. For example, if you have a clip art of a woman wearing a blue dress and you want to turn the dress red, you have to click-on the dress handles to avoid turning the entire woman red. To do this, you must first break the graphic into its components: a step called “ungroup” (located on the draw button in the lower left corner of the screen). Once the art is ungrouped, you can click on the individual parts and make changes. When done, if you wish to animate the graphic, be sure to turn it back into a group.

Text is similar to graphics, but is controlled by a second feature: frames. Frames are the gray borders that surround the text. To type within a frame, simply click inside it. To stop typing, click OFF the slide (outside the page).

To move text, you must first click on it, which activates the frame. Then you must click the frame. Clicking the frame turns on the frame handles. Like graphics, stretching the frame handles will make the frame larger or smaller; it will not, however, affect the size of the text within the frame (beyond odd word wraps within the frame, if you make the frame too small). Text format is controlled by the format menu and toolbar. But the size of the frame is important, since it also controls the size of any box or border you put around the frame.

Unlike graphics, to move a frame and its contents, do not click in the middle; this puts you back into typing (editing the text). Instead, click the frame itself, and drag the entire border wherever you want the text to be positioned.

Clicking on a text frame (so there is NO cursor visible in the text) is the same as highlighting text for formatting. For example, if you click on the frame and turn on underline, all words and spaces within the frame will be underlined. (If you click in the middle of one word, only that word will be underlined; you can highlight text, just as in word processing, to select areas to format.)

Remember: Every element on a slide, whether text or graphic, is controlled by handles.

Design Elements of a Slide

In addition to layout, text, or graphics, every slide contains three design components:

  • Slide background
  • Slide color scheme
  • Slide design template

These are located on the Format menu. They can be set for the individual slide, or changes can be made on the “slide master,” located under “View.” The slide master is the overall slide format containing anything you want on each page (such as page numbers or type styles). When all of these elements are combined, they are referred to as a slide “design template.” There are a number of templates already built-in to work with (see below).

Slide Background

The background is any element you want to apply to the entire slide (such as a color) that the text, charts, or drawings will be on top of (think of it as the color paint you’ll use on your wall before hanging a picture). A background can be applied to one slide in a presentation, or to all slides in order to create visual consistency and tie the presentation together.

There are five kinds of background. You can select a color background or choose “fill effects.” Fill effects provide you with gradient fills (one color that changes into another), textures (such as marble), patterns (such as red and blue checks), or pictures (watermarks).

Color Scheme

The color scheme is where you specify the color combinations you wish to be able to work with in your presentation. It shows you how the current scheme is being used in terms of:

SETTINGDEFAULT

BackgroundWhite

TextBlack

ShadowsGray

TitleBlack

FillsLight blue

AccentDark blue

AccentTeal (blue-green)

AccentYellow-green

and allows you to change those you don’t like. It also allows you to chose alternate schemes, or create a scheme based on your current color use (“Follow Master”). As you pick colors, you get a sample “preview” of what your slide will look like.

These elements can be changed at any time within the presentation. If you “apply to all,” then all slides will be updated. Any areas you have previously formatted with colors you chose (unless they were scheme colors) will not change.

Creating Slides

Creating a Title Slide

Once the slide layout has been picked, you are ready to type in the title and subtitle (if needed). Simply point at the title area or subtitle area with the mouse, click, and type your text. To change text once it has been inserted, point at where you wish the change to be, click (be sure you see the I-bar), and use delete (right-delete) or backspace (left-delete) to take text out. Then type in the new content.

To put text other than a title or subtitle on the page, use the A-tool from the drawing toolbar (text box). To move text, click on the text, point at the grid around the text, then pull it wherever you want it on the page.

Creating a Bullet List

Use the “new slide” button on the top-right toolbar to bring up the layout menu (do not confuse “new slide” with the first toolbar button, “new file”). Fill in the title as in the title slide.

On the Format menu is an option to adjust bullets. It allows you to choose other bullets (such as Wingdings), change their color, and adjust their size. Use tab to lower the level of each bullet. Use shift-tab to raise the level of each bullet.

On the “Slide Show” menu is an option (under “Custom Animation”) called “After animation.” This feature tells PowerPoint that, when you present the bulleted list, show one line (or category) at a time. As each new item appears, the previous items can be faded (“dimmed”) to a color you determine.

Creating a Graph

Use the “new slide” button on the top-right toolbar to bring up the layout menu. Fill in the title as in the title slide.

In the center of the new slide will be an icon that looks like a chart. Double-click with the mouse on the icon to activate the graph command (also found under “Insert/Microsoft Graph” on the menu).

A “data entry” screen will appear where you are required to type in your data. This screen is based on Excel or Word charting. The first column allows you to specify which rows to include in the chart. The top letters represent columns in which you enter your data. The first row of blank cells is the data labels; the first column is the data legends. As you work, in the background you can see what your chart will look like. The default is a 3-dimensional bar chart.

Across the top of your screen, you have a special toolbar, used for graphing. These buttons allow you to:

  • Import Data from Excel — Requires you to enter the filename which stores the Excel worksheet
  • Import Chart
  • View the Data Worksheet — To get back to your data to change it.
  • Cut/Copy/Paste/Undo
  • Graph Data by Row/Graph by Column
  • Change the Chart Type to area graph, horizontal bar (“column”), one-dimensional vertical bar, line or ribbon graph, pie or 3-dimensional pie, scattergram, “doughnut group,” and radar.
  • Vertical gridlines
  • Horizontal gridlines
  • Legend — Turn on or off the legend (which identifies the data)
  • Text box — Draw a box with text that can be inserted on the slide
  • Drawing — Insert pictures
  • Color — Change colors of any element; click first on the element you wish to change
  • Patterns — Change color and fill pattern (such as hatch marks) for any element

Note that the menu across the top has also changed, to reflect options that are pertinent to graphs. Under tools, for example, you will find menus to change orientation and perspectives of the graphs.

Once your data have been entered and edited, close the data screen (or click on the data but-ton to turn off the data screen, or click back on the slide). You are returned to your screen, where you can then change any elements you don’t like (such as adding a title). Since clicking on the title returns you to the normal non-graphing toolbars, if you want to make changes in the parts of the chart, you must double-click on the chart to re-activate the graphing tool bar. Then you can click on each item of the chart you want to change.